Cooperative Group Cancer Clinical Trials: An NCIC Clinical Trials Group Perspective

Development of clinical trials in a cooperative group setting: the eastern cooperative oncology group.

PURPOSE We examine the processes and document the calendar time required to activate phase II and III clinical trials by an oncology group: the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG). METHODS Setup steps were documented by (a) interviewing ECOG headquarters and statistical center staff, and committee chairs, (b) reviewing standard operating procedure manuals, and (c) inspecting study recor...

Evaluation of Clinical Trials

In a number of important clinical issues such as evaluation of the efficacy or effectiveness of therapeutic or preventive interventions as well as for comparing the harms of interventions, randomized controlled trials (RCTs) provide the highest levels of evidence, either directly or indirectly. It is obvious that critical appraisal of these studies to assess their validity and precision is of p...

Evidence Based Medicine: Clinical Trials

Evidence based medicine is very important for success of modern medicine. It is the ongoing process of using the most reliable evidence from clinical studies, scientific understanding and medical practice to make the best possible medical choice for patients. Evidence based medicine is how medicine advances and how we get improvements in life expectancy and quality of life. It not only identifi...

Group sequential designs for clinical trials.

Prostate cancer clinical trials of the Southwest Oncology Group.

The changing clinical dynamics of prostate cancer have resulted in a broadening of the research focus of the Genitourinary (GU) Cancer Committee of the Southwest Oncology Group (SWOG). Beginning with an emphasis on hormone-refractory disease in its early years, SWOG prostate cancer trials now cover the entire spectrum of the disease: localized, locally advanced, metastatic and hormone-refractor...